On Buzzer Techniques

[quizbowlchamp1]

Does anyone have good buzzer techniques? I buzzer prime combined with a technique pioneered by Jeopardy! legend James Holzhauer. He crosses his arms and grabs the wrist he is buzzing with. This cuts your buzzer speed in half. If anyone has a better buzzer technique, please let me know.

[NotAiden]

dan ni shoots me in the ankle every time I lose a buzzer race

[joshxu]

A trick to winning buzzer races is to buzz earlier, not faster. Most players first hear a clue they recognize, and then they buzz. Instead of doing this, you should buzz first, and then hear a clue you recognize. In essence, even though you don't know the answer when you buzz, you're overwhelmingly confident that you'll know it by the time the moderator stops reading. A concrete example: tossup is asking for a country, and you hear "this country has its capital at..."; buzz immediately if you know all or almost all of the world capitals; in the time it takes for the mod to recognize your buzz, they will have read the name of the capital. A product of winning more buzzer races is that you will get more questions wrong, which will happen quite often if you utilize this strategy too liberally.

[cemeterysummoning]

watch 7O3X

[Good Goblin Housekeeping]

There's really not more to it than priming a bit. When playing middle school level questions it might be a bit more important for speed but Josh's general advice about just learning more at the end of the day is probably the most imporatnt thing as it means you'll have an idea of what the question's looking for before the clues get too easy and be a bit more mentally prepared/sure of the other among other things

[quizzical1]

Some good buzzing techniques, as said before by a fellow collaborator, is buzzing mid-word. Also, something a lot of players I know struggle with is buzzer confidence. Powers and tens with a couple negs here and there are ok, but not buzzing at all is not. Remember the 80% rule, where if you are 80% sure, buzz. Also, if you are on the verge of knowing something, put your buzzer out to indicate to your teammates that this is your wheelhouse. Pressing the buzzer down instead of buzzing on and off will let you buzz before the other teams. On an unrelated note, how many people use buzzers that aren't always plungers, and which are generally better for buzzing?

[dni]

It is important to keep the cord linking your buzzer to the central hub as straight as possible. This minimizes the distance the electrons have to travel, while also reducing their need to decelerate and change directions along tricky curved segments.

[Good Goblin Housekeeping]

It is important to keep the cord linking your buzzer to the central hub as straight as possible. This minimizes the distance the electrons have to travel, while also reducing their need to decelerate and change directions along tricky curved segments.

I also recommend making sure the buzzer is plugged in. Very rarely used gamer trick

[quizbowlcaptain]

Note- I will be calling this strategy the "Dutch" strategy, named after Dutch Connerty, a player I went to Qwiz camp with...

With that being said...

The Dutch strategy consists of your team sitting at the red buzzers (on control box) with your best player sitting at "Red 1". This is because the circuitry also starts with Red 1-4 and then the other buzzers. So if two players buzz at the same time, the red buzzer will always win.

[Subotai the Valiant, Final Dog of War]

Admittedly, pure buzzer speed may be more relevant on MS regular difficulty questions, which are short and are often buzzed on during early clues by top teams.

But cosigning what the others have said, the best way to win a buzzer race on a clue is to know what's going on before everyone else. If you buzz on the first syllable of a word, or the descriptor before a word, or you can run through possibilities in your head faster than your opponent due to narrowing the range of possible answers, you'll usually beat someone who is just buzzing on a "buzzword" they hear.

Which buzzer you sit at would change buzzer speed so little that it only ever matters if everyone is simultaneously trying to buzz after a neg at the moment when the buzz is cleared. While this does happen in individual events, it never matters when you're playing with two teams, since there's nobody you're competing with once the other team has negged.

[Somewhere in the Stratosphere]

so basically, with hs questions, buzzer speed is just intuition?

arkansas is adopting pyramidal questions this coming season so i probably need this too lol

[echoes in the Othersea]

so basically, with hs questions, buzzer speed is just intuition?

arkansas is adopting pyramidal questions this coming season so i probably need this too lol

It's guessing correctly before anyone else does. There have been many cases of "vibes buzzing," where intuition and experience have allowed someone to get an answer correct with a relatively low degree of confidence, but I would say the more important skill is knowing more and being able to have an equally confident answer with less information.

I'm not a big fan of things like "buzzing before you know the answer assuming that the space it takes the reader to stop will give you more information", although that might work. I think there really are two major advantages to just knowing more. One, allowing you to buzz lines earlier on entirely different clues, and two, having an idea of what the answer is going to be before the clue you buzz on is read is a huge advantage in buzzer races: when two players buzz on the same clue, one reacting to that clue as it is telling them what the answer is, and the other who already thought that was the answer and this clue is just confirming what they thought, in my experience the person who is confirming beats the person who just figured out that's what the answer is a substantial majority of the time.

[Somewhere in the Stratosphere]

so basically, with hs questions, buzzer speed is just intuition?

arkansas is adopting pyramidal questions this coming season so i probably need this too lol

It's guessing correctly before anyone else does. There have been many cases of "vibes buzzing," where intuition and experience have allowed someone to get an answer correct with a relatively low degree of confidence, but I would say the more important skill is knowing more and being able to have an equally confident answer with less information.

I'm not a big fan of things like "buzzing before you know the answer assuming that the space it takes the reader to stop will give you more information", although that might work. I think there really are two major advantages to just knowing more. One, allowing you to buzz lines earlier on entirely different clues, and two, having an idea of what the answer is going to be before the clue you buzz on is read is a huge advantage in buzzer races: when two players buzz on the same clue, one reacting to that clue as it is telling them what the answer is, and the other who already thought that was the answer and this clue is just confirming what they thought, in my experience the person who is confirming beats the person who just figured out that's what the answer is a substantial majority of the time.

That's usually how I played anyway, albeit with shorter, lower quality questions. A huge part of qb in my experience has been knowing enough to be able to associate certain things and make good guesses, except for certain clues on stock content that I'd already memorized

[a Joe]

Note- I will be calling this strategy the "Dutch" strategy, named after Dutch Connerty, a player I went to Qwiz camp with...

With that being said...

The Dutch strategy consists of your team sitting at the red buzzers (on control box) with your best player sitting at "Red 1". This is because the circuitry also starts with Red 1-4 and then the other buzzers. So if two players buzz at the same time, the red buzzer will always win.

Just so you know, the software corrects for this by adding millisecond delays. It does not and never has worked.

[a Joe]

Does anyone have good buzzer techniques? I buzzer prime combined with a technique pioneered by Jeopardy! legend James Holzhauer. He crosses his arms and grabs the wrist he is buzzing with. This cuts your buzzer speed in half. If anyone has a better buzzer technique, please let me know.

Russ, I like a lot of your other threads, but this one really just comes down to gripping the controller in a way that is comfortable for you and buzzing in when you think you know the answer. There really isn't any special technique to it.

Don't buzzer prime, that's a great way to neg randomly and not much else. Just practice; that's all you need.

[Immobilizer418]

Some good buzzing techniques, as said before by a fellow collaborator, is buzzing mid-word. Also, something a lot of players I know struggle with is buzzer confidence. Powers and tens with a couple negs here and there are ok, but not buzzing at all is not. Remember the 80% rule, where if you are 80% sure, buzz. Also, if you are on the verge of knowing something, put your buzzer out to indicate to your teammates that this is your wheelhouse. Pressing the buzzer down instead of buzzing on and off will let you buzz before the other teams. On an unrelated note, how many people use buzzers that aren't always plungers, and which are generally better for buzzing?

As the esteemed Sinecio Morales says, "All of our buzzes can become powers if we have the courage to neg." I think that might be the most important part of all of this.

[EnviroBen13]

Does anyone have good buzzer techniques? I buzzer prime combined with a technique pioneered by Jeopardy! legend James Holzhauer. He crosses his arms and grabs the wrist he is buzzing with. This cuts your buzzer speed in half. If anyone has a better buzzer technique, please let me know.

Taught this to my team and it really helped us in our most recent meet, thank you man.

Usually, I hold my hand to the side with the back of my hand facing up, nothing to it other than it feeling more comfortable.

[quizbowlchamp1]

Taught this to my team and it really helped us in our most recent meet, thank you man.

Usually, I hold my hand to the side with the back of my hand facing up, nothing to it other than it feeling more comfortable.

I am glad that this worked for you.

[Metacarpal]

Imo buzzer technique really doesn't matter and one should just know more but if there's a slap box I hold it in both hands with my thumbs over the button and if there's no slap box I just buzz normally with the handheld

[Somewhere in the Stratosphere]

Imo buzzer technique really doesn't matter and one should just know more but if there's a slap box I hold it in both hands with my thumbs over the button and if there's no slap box I just buzz normally with the handheld

i agree with this, and also I HATE SLAP BOXES

[ChrisFromGCity]

So yeah, like those who are much better than me have said Just study more, but I think I'm a little faster using a slap box than a handheld. My pointer finger is a bit faster than my thumb. And like Joe said, definitely do not prime.

[Metacarpal]

Yeah buzzer priming leads to accidental buzzes (I tried this in HSNCT first round as an experiment, I got five negs)